Mitt Romney’s latest nightmare: He’s the Etch-a-Sketch Man

The Democratic National Committee quickly chipped in with a parody video.

Everything seemed to be kicking into a higher gear for Mitt Romney going into Wednesday. He was talking “inevitability” after drubbing his opponents in the Illinois primary, Jeb Bush endorsed him, and his Super PAC has raked in $43 million, far more than President Obama’s.

And then one of his top advisers just dropped an anvil on his foot, giving Romney a tag that we predict he will not live down through election day — and beyond — should he win: The Etch-A-Sketch Man.

It started when a CNN pundit asked Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom if there is “a concern that Santorum and Gingrich might force the governor to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election.”

“Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s like Etch A Sketch,” he said. “You can shake it up and we start all over again.”

For those of you unfortunate enough not to come of age during the post “Hair”-era, we’re talking about a toy where you draw something on a screen using two knobs, then turn it upside down to erase it. Think of it as a Paleozoic iPad. One of these, complete with one of the first of the parodies that have arisen since daybreak:

The beatdown began immediately. Team Santorum sent a frenzied e-mail:

“”***SHOCKING VIDEO EMBEDDED*** LIKE AN ETCH A SKETCH . TEAM ROMNEY ADMITS THEIR CANDIDATE WILL CHANGE POSITIONS IN THE GENERAL ELECTION.”

The Dems will be thumping this one for months. Bill Burton, the former Obama spokesman who now fronts his SuperPAC called it a “candid admission” of how Romney “is going to try to mask his right-wing, anti-middle class agenda in order to win the election.”

The parodies have already started and it’s not even noon on the West Coast. Here’s one of the better ones.

Yes, Romney’s opponents are stretching the context of what Fehrnstrom was saying. He was talking political consultant speak. Every campaign does sort of start over when the primaries are over and the general election starts. To paraphrase the great political strategist Richard Nixon (please, hold your applause), your run hard to the right in the primary and then pivot and run to the central in the general.

Here’s the video of this moment that will frame the remaining part of the campaign:

Got to tip the cap to Santo’s press team, which quickly put the device in Rick’s hands: